As we move ever closer to the beta (beta key recipients, check your inboxes early next week for an update!), we thought we'd take some time to show you the mechanics of one of the skirmish modes you'll be trying out: Lay Siege. This mode provides a contrast for the MMORTS, as it allows the same large-scale action, but at a much quicker pace by reducing the need to build up your army first. Instead, you get a set number of units and resources and the strategy comes down to micromanaging what you are given to penetrate enemy defenses. This mode is ideal for quick and balanced matches when you just want to get in some fighting without having to build anything or transport your army vast distances.

On load-up, you will be presented with a merchant screen, and you will be given some gold to spend on mercenaries. I sold two battalions of golbin raiders and purchased another siege ram and two siege towers.

Returning to the game, you will be given another choice to customize your battle. You will be presented with two locations from which you can attack from. I chose to move my troops eastward.

A great, and varied, army awaits you in your army camp, allowing for instant action. In your army camp, you can heal your units, and construct new siege engines or research upgrades from the Armory building. Using siege engines is essential to penetrating enemy defenses - use siege towers to get your units onto the enemy walls, catapults to take out enemy archers, and siege rams to break down the gates.

There are two ways to open enemy gates to get to the king - by using siege rams to destroy them, or by using siege towers and ladders to get your infantry units inside the walls to destroy the large Gate Crank object on the other side of the gate.

Once I have breached the first gate, my infantry scatter and wreak havoc among the stronghold as the rain picks up. My rams proceed to the second gate, quickly bringing it down while I work on clearing another group of archers slaughtering my oncoming infantry one-by-one.

The stronghold is in my hands! Now all that remains is the enemy king, located on the coast. While there are still some troops to deal within inside the main stronghold, I send most of my units to deal with the king and his guards.

But, alas, I put an end to him as my remaining units cheer and a victory cinematic plays.

Darvin

01-22-2010, 06:09 PM

Siege mode is one of my most highly anticipated game modes. I loved creating and sieging castles in Stronghold, and this is heavily reminiscent of those wonderful siege battles.

GPS51

01-22-2010, 06:46 PM

A terrific preview of siege warfare in DOF. Really looking forward to the fight for the outward walls. I presume it is possible to protect things like gate cranks as the defender?

Darathor

01-22-2010, 07:12 PM

DoF looks like it has a highly unique and interesting siege system that I'm really looking forward to. I like how you can just attack a castle as a game mode, looks really fun! I also like the dynamic weather like the rain.

Henry Martin

01-22-2010, 08:05 PM

This looks great. Can't wait to play this. Storming a stronghold is always fun.

Kire

01-22-2010, 09:06 PM

It looks like the attacker have too easy/fast way to bring down castles =). Since this is an attack on elvish castle..... what counter siege ways have they ?=)

Darathor

01-22-2010, 10:02 PM

Well, he was just attacking a computer, right? It didn't look like he defended his walls much at all, giving him a free ticket in if he sacrifices some fodder.

If you want some defenses for the elves, I saw some elven bolt throwers (ballista) mounted on the walls.

Generation

01-22-2010, 10:07 PM

This is kind of the same concept as of Rome total war with the custom battles but still looks good :D

Noxeros

01-23-2010, 01:12 AM

How did the Elven Grandmasters max health go upp to 2975 from 2250?:confused:
Either way, it looks great!:D I would still like to see two massive armies fightning on an open field tho...;)

Jack

01-23-2010, 01:50 AM

looks really great
if you have no internet, you can do lay-siege:p

Darvin

01-23-2010, 01:54 AM

How did the Elven Grandmasters max health go upp to 2975 from 2250?
He killed several of those giant trolls and leveled up twice.

You can see he's listed as level 1 in the first screenshot and level 3 in the second screenshot... and with very little health remaining.

Jean=A=Luc

01-23-2010, 02:51 AM

looks really great
if you have no internet, you can do lay-siege:p

If you don't have internet you most likely don't know about this game so no siege for youuuuuu. :p

crex719

01-23-2010, 05:26 AM

I love seige matches, can't wait :-)

blackfang

01-23-2010, 07:32 AM

I love to defend against a siege but i really hate sieging people (i always loose more then i kill) So i am going for defender type of person:D

zach12wqasxz

01-23-2010, 08:21 AM

I love to defend against a siege but i really hate sieging people (i always loose more then i kill) So i am going for defender type of person:D

i have that same exact problem :D
im always in every game more of a defensive playing type guy

Jack

01-23-2010, 08:32 AM

I love to defend against a siege but i really hate sieging people (i always loose more then i kill) So i am going for defender type of person:D

i think the same
and it giffes me a better felling by defending a whole city in place of distruct it totaly

wills370

01-23-2010, 08:32 AM

Wow looks great. The cinematic feature i think is both good for fast battles etc and bad being slightly unrealistic or showing possible traps the player may want to keep hidden. Although can you possibly put in a feature to remove it at the players choice. That way you can have the possibility of going in blind like a true siege.

With regard to the leveling up. Will you be able to make changes in game to them imediatly as they level up or does it just affect health and strength etc?

With the leveling up does it also change the units health to full? As some games have when a unit levels up?

I know alot of questions but really looks a good job :) NIce one to all involved :)

Oo also will this be purly PVP or PVE aswell?

Darathor

01-23-2010, 08:53 AM

Oo also will this be purly PVP or PVE aswell?

I'm pretty sure that he was attacking a computer if that was what you are talking about.

Andy Joslin

01-23-2010, 09:03 AM

It looks like the attacker have too easy/fast way to bring down castles =). Since this is an attack on elvish castle..... what counter siege ways have they ?=)
The elven counter-siege weapons are yet to be unveiled:)

Remember this was against a computer, on easy difficulty. On hard it is much more of a challenge to bring down a castle.

GPS51

01-23-2010, 09:24 AM

Oh well if this was vs the cpu on easy then no worries. I just didn't want that to be the ai's best shot and getting overrun anyway.

Kire

01-23-2010, 09:47 AM

Although can you possibly put in a feature to remove it at the players choice. That way you can have the possibility of going in blind like a true siege.

In a true siege i guess the leader would get all info as he can get about the castle so he can preform better. I dont think there are/were many leaders that blindly attacked well fortified castle, at least not successfully =P). Raiding is all different =).

Remember this was against a computer, on easy difficulty. On hard it is much more of a challenge to bring down a castle.

Oh fine than =).
Hope we can see in next siege some imba elvish staircases fight =) (tho prefer video of that).

Oh and one more thing, the death effect should be more random like at bfme2 - rolling to the ground and dead body on the ground. Atm looks like on one picture same model of dead body in blood and another, which is 100% same, some pixels above him and so on.... looks like copy pasted one model of dead orc =P. Tho i know the game isnt finished yet and that its pointless as that left/right hand users topic but i had to mention it =P.

Darathor

01-23-2010, 10:21 AM

Yes, in the picture where the orcs have just gotten a ram to the gates, there are a bunch of dead orcs that all died the exact same way. I do recall however, a human screenshot a while ago where there were some human swordsman who died in different ways, and even writhed on the ground in agony occasionally.

GPS51

01-23-2010, 10:56 AM

At least wait until a gruesome battle video has been posted before judging the death animations. It's like that left/right thing. Much ado about nothing. Carry on RWS.

wills370

01-23-2010, 02:43 PM

In a true siege i guess the leader would get all info as he can get about the castle so he can preform better. I dont think there are/were many leaders that blindly attacked well fortified castle, at least not successfully =P). Raiding is all different =).

Yes i know that i phrased it pretty badly looking at it. But just maybe a limited cinematic that didnt show all the curret positions of the enemy troops within the castle etc? If that makes more sence?

welshie

01-23-2010, 03:47 PM

My frave Fanstasy friday yet! shame there wasnt more pictures of the inbetween bit of the breakingof the first gate and the killing of the king.

Alex Walz

01-23-2010, 03:56 PM

These strongholds are defended pretty well. The units are spread out fairly thin at the beginning to protect all sides, but if you start ramming a gate, most of the units will run to that gate to protect it, so that's where it gets tricky.

Supreme

01-23-2010, 06:56 PM

Thats a nice way to deal with it. Two sided attacks could work then too =)

Negthareas

01-23-2010, 09:13 PM

It will be nice to have a challenging AI to play against - where I live, the internet connection is sometimes shakey, so I couldn't always count on playing MMORTS. The Age of Empires Series, BFME and BFME2 all seemed to have reletively easy AI. Once you got good at the game, the Ai was a piece of cake no matter how hard it was set.

It looks like troop placement, and strategy will be important components of this Game!!

wills370

01-24-2010, 05:15 AM

It will be nice to have a challenging AI to play against - where I live, the internet connection is sometimes shakey, so I couldn't always count on playing MMORTS. The Age of Empires Series, BFME and BFME2 all seemed to have reletively easy AI. Once you got good at the game, the Ai was a piece of cake no matter how hard it was set.

It looks like troop placement, and strategy will be important components of this Game!!

Yes i think thats what the game is really pushing in combat. Aswell as the use of statergy both preservation (of your best troops) and destruction (of your worse for the use of Fodder). It will be intresting to see how each react as orcs will most likly side with the fodder aproach on the large scale to win the battles through sheer force of numbers in some cases. As they can as a nation recover there numbers much greater. Whereas the elves in contrast will need to reserve or micro manage most of there troops to make sure they dont need to die needlessly. Being the most expensive and slowest recoving as a result. Should be a intresting mix :)

Aametherar

01-24-2010, 06:19 AM

I see a lot saying they love seigeing castles, well I like slaughtering hoards of troops running into my walls dying, so lets team you, you swarm I slaughter.:D

raving

01-24-2010, 06:54 AM

looks sweet!

The Witch King of Angmar

01-24-2010, 04:09 PM

Looks cool! I like the fact that siege maps won't have to be made as much by players since this mode is provided. Great job.

Aametherar

01-25-2010, 01:11 AM

Looks cool! I like the fact that siege maps won't have to be made as much by players since this mode is provided. Great job.

That's true, I think most player made siege maps i've played in RTS's are unbalanced badly in 1 way or another, so this mode should be great for that. Being an official mode i'm sure it will be tweaked to a nice balance.

Konstantin Fomenko

01-25-2010, 11:03 AM

Something I wanted to add to the topic of our siege skirmish mode... right now we are working on expanding the game modes with several interesting twists.

I`ll go over couple of these additions:

Reinforcement
This is for both Castle Defend and Lay Siege mode. 10-15 minutes into the battle defenders of the town can expect a really large cavalry reinforcement - Lord of the Rings style. In Lay Siege mode this puts the pressure on the player to quickly take the city, or if that`s not possible to switch from attacking to defending for a few minutes. And in Castle Defend if fighting against overwhelming odds - you`ll be counting every second till your cavalry reinforcement arrives, while doing all you can to keep your king alive.

Multiple Attack Waves
For now we only planned this for the Castle Defend mode as a nice way to turn a 15-20 minute battle, into a 2-3 hour epic siege defense.
Once you fight off one or two AI armies attacking your town, you`ll be given few minutes in which to loot the thousands of corpses in your town, rebuild your fortifications and to try to train more units. But don`t get too comfortable - AI armies will be back soon.
Players will be able to select how many such AI waves they want to fight against, from 2 to 10. Duration between attacks will be dynamic, depending on the game`s difficulty - but also on how many units player has left. From 2 to 10 minutes.

Capture and Hold mode - unconfirmed.
As an addition to Lay Siege - after you capture the stronghold and kill the king, it goes under your control, and you get several minutes to loot the corpses, repair the walls and heal your troops before the roles switch and AI armies arrive to retake their stronghold.

World Conquest - unconfirmed.
In this mode you`ll need to capture all the 12 towns, and defend 6 of them. Your army - or what`s left of it will be transferred from one battle to another, with the option to buy more mercenary units between battles. We might even bring World Map into this... but yeah - this is not something we can confirm at this point.

GPS51

01-25-2010, 11:09 AM

Hey those options look terrific. Can we expect Capture and Hold mode and World Conquest as a massive patch or addon after the game is released? Also in the WC mode would it be possible to recruit units from each local area prior to the battle? IE a massive elite army composed of each armies best units as the battles get harder? Twould be loads of fun. Thanks for the snippet.

Konstantin Fomenko

01-25-2010, 11:15 AM

Can we expect Capture and Hold mode and World Conquest as a massive patch or addon after the game is released

We really hope to include this mode in the original release - it would be a great substitute for the single-player campaign.

GPS51

01-25-2010, 11:21 AM

We really hope to include this mode in the original release - it would be a great substitute for the single-player campaign.

It would indeed. Would there be support to play this mode LAN or online? The more I hear the more I get excited about DOF. Support for this game sounds epic. Hoping it comes through...:cool:

Puppeteer

01-25-2010, 01:37 PM

Capture and Hold mode sounds wonderful!

Kire

01-25-2010, 04:02 PM

Wow all mods look very nice, just one question ... is it possible to set that corpses in these skirmish mods dont disappear and stay till end ?=). Tho It would nice to see corpses everywhere =) or till you loot them.

Darathor

01-25-2010, 04:29 PM

Those modes sound really awesome! I particularly like the capture and hold mode. You guys are really putting a lot of detail into this game. I cannot wait until this game comes out.

GetAngry

01-25-2010, 07:38 PM

Looks like a lot of fun. Just to clear things up, this mode can be against other players right?

Darathor

01-25-2010, 08:30 PM

Looks like a lot of fun. Just to clear things up, this mode can be against other players right?

Most likely, I don't see any reason why player wouldn't be allowed to do this on multiplayer.

Swift sword

01-27-2010, 08:52 PM

I'd just like to say I love the idea of this mode. It seems to end up adding plenty of replaability to the game itself. I will say I'd prefer it if both sides had to build up a force more before the battle begins, but I'm sure there will be plenty of modes like that, and I'll soon be thaking you fo providing me with a quick mass-slaughter mode to play in. ;)

lol129

02-10-2010, 01:27 AM

the screens look nice but i have never been a kind of attacker unles it's with overwhelming force so i dont think il be playing this mode much

Zeluk

03-04-2010, 03:32 PM

I love to defend against a siege but i really hate sieging people (i always loose more then i kill) So i am going for defender type of person:D

the screens look nice but i have never been a kind of attacker unles it's with overwhelming force so i dont think il be playing this mode much

Keep in mind that in real life this happened the majority of the time. Generals hardly ever actually assaulted a stronghold unless it was worth the risk and the expense of so many resources. In most cases armies would just sit outside and wait for the defenders to surrender. For example, take the movie Troy. In the movie Agamemnon has command of thousands of troops. Even though he has a number advantage compared to the city of Troy itself, which has a much smaller garrison of troops, the kill ratio is greatly in their favor. In every version of the story the Greeks don't really make any real headway until after they get inside the city, then they make short work of the defenders. Before that though, boy, did they recieve a lot of casualties.

As for the Lay-Siege game mode. Sounds fun, most likely a lot of my early matches will be this. Just so I can learn the game mechanics.

Khan kreiger

06-02-2010, 06:19 PM

love it....your orc army jus took over the elves wit ease. You should of attacked a human stronghold

Boomshaker

12-05-2010, 07:32 AM

wow! very nice

haski12

12-05-2010, 08:01 AM

I really like the stairs of the elven castle they look really nice and is there a negative effect of the rain?

Durken

03-15-2011, 09:18 PM

It's a good idea to have these quick matches for those days when you may not want the full scale version